Visual Studio Code install location - windows

I installed Visual Studio Code a few days ago, and now I can't find the executable on my machine. Where is it?
I have checked Programs and Features. I have also checked my PATH. For some reason it isn't in either.

Update 10.11.2018
If you do a complete re-install, including uninstalling prior versions of code installed on your machine the new version will be installed at
C:\Users\{UserName}\AppData\Local\Programs\Microsoft VS Code
Update 06.07.2018
Since Version 1.25 VS Code supports portable mode.
Instructions on how to use this are documented here.
You will need the ZIP file download version - not the installer.
After unzipping the contents of the archive, create a data folder inside the folder, where code.exe is located. All settings will now be saved there and can be brought along with you.
|- VSCode-win32-x64-1.25.0-insider
| |- Code.exe (or code executable)
| |- data
| |- ...
On macOS, the folder must be named code-portable-data and has to be a sibling of the app itself. Not inside the app.
|- Visual Studio Code.app
|- code-portable-data
The reasoning behind this can be read here: What is VSCode User Setup for Windows?
Update
If you are using the x64 version, the path is:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft VS Code\
C:\Program Files\Microsoft VS Code\Code.exe
Original answer
At this point and time (Version 1.19.2) Vs code no longer resides in your AppData folder, but under
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft VS Code\
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft VS Code\Code.exe

There are two types of installer available for VSCode.
Go to link to find type of installer you want.
If you are using/going for User Installer, the version will be installed at:
C:\Users\{UserName}\AppData\Local\Programs\Microsoft VS Code
If you are using/going for 64bit System installer, the version will be installed at:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft VS Code\
If you are using/going for 32bit System installer, the version will be installed at:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft VS Code\

I used the new VSCode User Setup installer on Windows 10, and found the executable here:
C:\Users\my-username\AppData\Local\Programs\Microsoft VS Code\

Okay. I found it in the docs.
C:\Users\my.user\AppData\Local\Code\app-0.1.0

The way I find most intuitive and easy to remember is:
Search for Visual Studio Code in the Windows 10 search bar -> right-click -> Open File Location
For me this goes directly to:
C:\Users\{YOUR_NAME}\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Visual Studio Code
Right-click on the shortcut -> Properties -> Start in:
"C:\Users\{YOUR_NAME}\AppData\Local\Programs\Microsoft VS Code"

If you prefer username-agnostic path strings:
folder: %HOMEPATH%\AppData\Local\Programs\Microsoft VS Code\
executable: %HOMEPATH%\AppData\Local\Programs\Microsoft VS Code\bin\code
If you also want to use those path strings inside C#/C++ code:
folder: "\"%HOMEPATH%\\AppData\\Local\\Programs\\Microsoft VS Code\\\""
executable: "\"%HOMEPATH%\\AppData\\Local\\Programs\\Microsoft VS Code\\bin\\code\""

If for some reason none of the other answers work, try this:
Go into your vscode settings
Find any setting that has 'Edit in settings.json' (for example - Color Customizations)
Press ctrl+shift+s
Go one folder up
Copy + paste the file location (on the top for windows) into into another file explorer
Profit

The difference is:
System Installer will install VSC in C:\Program Files\Microsoft VS Code\
User Installer will install VSC in %HOMEPATH%\AppData\Local\Programs\Microsoft VS Code\
Search for the files with respect the version installed.

Why default your program would be installed here..
C:\Program Files\Microsoft VS Code\
If you have chosen different directory while installing it you can get it by:
1. Go to the icon location
2. Right click open properties
3. Check target

I found it at
C:\Users\%username%\source\repos\Notes\%VSCode-folder%\bin\Debug\
Where %username% is the user and %VSCode-folder% is the VSCode project

Related

How to install vstest.console.exe offline

I am supposed to do an offline installation of vstest.console.exe in the folder path as follows: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TestWindow
I have tried using offline packages such as vs_testagent.exe and vs_testcontroller.exe according to the following link: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/install/create-a-network-installation-of-visual-studio. However, these packages do not contain vstest.console.exe.
I am also unable to do a full installation of VS2017 due to space issues. Do anyone have any suggestions? Thanks.
Download the nuget package: Microsoft.TestPlatform, rename it a zip file. Open the zip file, you will find all you need from this folder: .\tools\net451\Common7\IDE\Extensions\TestPlatform, including vstest.console.exe, testhost.**.exe, QTAgent.exe, datacollector.exe.
If you added the nuget package to project, it just downloads the package to packages folder and won't complie to bin, so you have to add a Post-Build event to copy files to bin folder from the packages folder.
You are looking for "Build Tools for Visual Studio" (Microsoft login required). It will give you an installer "vs_BuildTools.exe", which will install by default the build tools in:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\BuildTools
(by default)
Two versions of vstest console were installed when I ran it:
...\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TestWindow\vstest.console.exe
...\Common7\IDE\Extensions\TestPlatform\vstest.console.exe
I do not know why, nor how they are different. I use the first one.
I used the chocolatey package visualstudio2019testagent to install VS 2019 Test Agent.
Not sure if this would help someone in the future.
Download the Visual Studio Build Tools installer from https://my.visualstudio.com/Downloads?q=build%20tools%20for%20visual%20studio
Run the installer, click the tab Individual components and select Testing tool core features - Build Tools
After installation the vstest.console.exe is located in folder
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\BuildTools\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TestWindow

How to install SignTool.exe for Windows 10

How to install SignTool.exe in Visual Studio 2015 for Windown 10?
I tried to build my project but the program threw an error :
Error An error occurred while signing: SignTool.exe not found.
You need to install the Windows 10 SDK.
Visual Studio 2015 Update 1 contains it already, but it is not installed by default. You should go to Control Panel -> Programs and Features, find Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 and select "Change".
Visual Studio 2015 setup will start. Select "Modify".
In Visual Studio components list find "Universal Windows App Development Tools", open the list of sub-items and select "Windows 10 SDK (10.0.10240)".
Windows 10 SDK in VS 2015 Update 1 Setup
Of cause you can install Windows 10 SDK directly from Microsoft: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=698771
As josant already wrote - when the installation finishes you will find the SignTool.exe in the folders:
x86 -> c:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\x86
x64 -> c:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\x64\
If you only want SignTool and really want to minimize the install, here is a way that I just reverse-engineered my way to:
Download the .iso file from https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/windows-10-sdk (current download link is http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkID=2022797) The .exe download will not work, since it's an online installer that pulls down its dependencies at runtime.
Unpack the .iso with a tool such as 7-zip.
Install the Installers/Windows SDK Signing Tools-x86_en-us.msi file - it's only 388 KiB large. For reference, it pulls in its files from the following .cab files, so these are also needed for a standalone install:
4c3ef4b2b1dc72149f979f4243d2accf.cab (339 KiB)
685f3d4691f444bc382762d603a99afc.cab (1002 KiB)
e5c4b31ff9997ac5603f4f28cd7df602.cab (389 KiB)
e98fa5eb5fee6ce17a7a69d585870b7c.cab (1.2 MiB)
There we go - you will now have the signtool.exe file and companions in C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\10.0.17763.0\x64 (replace x64 with x86, arm or arm64 if you need it for another CPU architecture.)
It is also possible to commit signtool.exe and the other files from this folder into your version control repository if want to use it in e.g. CI scenarios. I have tried it and it seems to work fine.
(All files are probably not necessary since there are also some other .exe tools in this folder that might be responsible for these dependencies, but I am not sure which ones could be removed to make the set of files even smaller. Someone else is free to investigate further in this area. :) I tried to just copy signtool.* and that didn't work, so at least some of the other files are needed.)
Here's where you'll find it:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\App Certification Kit
Screenshot:
Best solution end of 2020:
Just download Windows 10 SDK from Microsoft here:
https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=698771
In setup, choose only Windows App Certification App (it's only 184 MB)
You can find signtool.exe here:
%PROGRAMFILES(X86)%\Windows Kits\10\bin\x64
Cheers!
As per the comments in the question... On Windows 10 Signtool.exe and other SDK tools have been moved into "%programfiles(x86)%\Windows Kits\".
Typical path to signtool on Windows 10.
32 bit = "c:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\x86\signtool.exe"
64 bit = "c:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\x64\signtool.exe"
Tools for SDK 8.0 and 8.1 also reside in the "Windows Kits" folder.
Another answer from 2021.
You might not need Windows SDK at all. If you have VS-2019 installed, you might already have signtool in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\ClickOnce\SignTool\signtool.exe
NOTE: The good thing about this particular signtool version (compared to the Windows SDK one), is that it's self-contained, and does not need all the dll's next to it (mssign32.dll, wintrust.dll etc, which usually lie around in Windows SDK folders).
You can even add this file to your source code repo (just one file), since this tool hasn't changed since 2016.
P.S. I had this signtool even without "ClickOnce publishing" component installed in my Visual Studio Community Edition.
Location:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\App Certification Kit\signtool.exe
In 2019, this is a quite recent link from Microsoft about how to obtain this tool:
The SignTool tool is a command-line tool that digitally signs files,
verifies signatures in files, or time stamps files. For information
about why signing files is important, see Introduction to Code
Signing. The tool is installed in the \Bin folder of the Microsoft
Windows Software Development Kit (SDK) installation path.
SignTool is available as part of the Windows SDK, which you can
download from https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?linkid=84091.
I only needed signtool, so I chose the minimal I came up with and signtool.exe is now in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1\Bin\signtool.exe
Microsoft article link:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/seccrypto/signtool
to install just the signingtools from the winsdksetup.exe (available at the same url as the windows sdk iso mentioned above) this is an option to, straight from the Dockerfile i'm working in:
RUN powershell Start-Process winsdksetup.exe -ArgumentList '/features OptionId.SigningTools', '/q', '/ceip off', '/norestart', -NoNewWindow -Wait
so if you're in windows then that'd be:
winsdksetup.exe /features OptionId.SigningTools
winsdksetup /h gives you the options, so i won't summarise them here.
I include the dockerfile snippet, as that is what i started my day looking for the solution for.
You don't have to install the Signtool. It might already be there.
Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\ and search for signtool.exe. In my system I found it under C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\ClickOnce\SignTool
No matter which version of Windows you are using, the above signtool will solve your purpose.
If you're using VS Express 2015, just go to your control panel --> programs and features --> select vs 2015 --> click change, then in the VS Express installer select 'Modify' --> select Publishing tools, and finish. Once setup completes the changes you will be able to create your installer.
You should go to Control Panel -> Programs and Features, find Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 and select "Change".
Visual Studio 2015 setup will start. Select "Modify".
In Visual Studio components list, open the list of sub-items and select "ClickOnce Publication Tools" and "Windows 10 SDK" too.
I did a modify with the Visual Studio from Control Panel, Programs and Features. The SDK was not at first apparent so I installed the Common Tools which lo and behold did include the SDK Update 3.
It's available many, many places, depending upon what is installed:
On my box, every one except the v6.0A SDK version supports the /fd option.
SignTool is available as part of the Windows SDK (which comes with Visual Studio Community 2015). Make sure to select the "ClickOnce Publishing Tools" from the feature list during the installation of Visual Studio 2015 to get the SignTool.
Once Visual Studio is installed you can run the signtool command from the Visual Studio Command Prompt.
By default (on Windows 10) the SignTool will be installed in:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\x86\signtool.exe
For me in 2021 the signtool.exe was here: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\x64" or in: x86
and not under: C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\App Certification Kit
even if I have this folder and may files in it.
I ran into an issue using this tool in a restrictive Azure DevOps Pipelines environment, where I couldn't even expand PATH or call any tools from an absolute path outside of the ADO build directories, meaning in this case anything from C:\Program Files (x86)\
My solution was to package it as a Secure File in ADO Pipelines' Library -> Secure Files section, allow my pipeline to access the file via its security settings, then download it as a build task and run it via a powershell task.
In the example below, I just query the help with the /? command. Just replace that with whatever command you want to use.
- task: DownloadSecureFile#1
displayName: "Signtool Download"
name: MSSignTool
inputs:
secureFile: 'signtool.exe'
- task : PowerShell#2
displayName: "Run Signtool"
inputs:
targetType: "inline"
script: $(MSSignTool.secureFilePath) /?
Warning 1: I'm not sure what dependencies are required for signtool.exe to work standalone, or if it even has any. The Windows 10 SDK and ADK was already installed in this build environment. If querying the help causes the tool to fail or crash, make sure one or both of those are installed. Hopefully you will have access to something like choco to install any missing dependencies.
Warning 2: Be careful if copying those code segments. ADO is pretty strict with dynamic whitespace, so if your spacing is off it will brick your whole pipelines file until you adjust the spacing to its correct position.

Visual studio 'xsd' command: file path

The command 'xsd' in the Visual Studio (2010) command window is not fiding my file.
Tried full path 'c:\...\etc...', tried path from project folder, tried any sub path of the full path, tried only the file name (as shown on any example in the web of the usage of the tool).
The file is inside the project inside a subfolder, like "project\schema\mySchema.xsd".
Command used
>Tools.Shell xsd <path\>myfile.xsd /classes
returns:
The operation could not be completed. System could not find specified file.
What work around can I make, how should I properly use the tool? (Am I using it wrongly?)
To find XSD.exe these days, go to:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v10.0A\bin\NETFX 4.7.2
Tools\xsd.exe
Step by step:
Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\
Click latest version (e.g. v10.0A)
Click Bin
Select latest .NET Version e.g. NETFX 4.7.2 Tools
There is xsd.exe
When you launch the shortcut that opens the Visual Studio Command Prompt you execute a batch file that set some important string inside the PATH environment variable. These strings contain the folder names where the XSD tool is located.
The shortcuts are located in this folder on my dev PC with Visual Studio 2013
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\Tools\Shortcuts
The shortcut that opens the Command Prompt for Visual Studio x86 Native Tools is something like this
%comspec% /k ""C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\VC\vcvarsall.bat"" x86
So, unless your installation is damaged you should be able to find the correct command in the relative directory of your Visual Studio 2010 install.

Visual Studio Empty Cordova Multi Device Hybrid App Build Failure [error code 8]

Having tried to follow all advices, remedies and workarounds including removing and reinstalling the Multi-Device Hybrid Apps for Visual Studio CPT1 I still can't seem to do a successful build of the included "Blank App (Apache Cordova)" project.
Build ends consistently in one single error:
The command ""C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7
\IDE\Extensions\k04kuuo3.ie0\packages\vs-mda\install" "C:\Program Files (x86)
\nodejs\" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7
\IDE\Extensions\k04kuuo3.ie0\packages\vs-mda"" exited with code 8.
File %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\vs-mda-targets\Microsoft.MDA.targets
Line 108
Column 5
Project BlankCordovaApp1
Environment settings:
ADT_HOME %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Android\android-sdk
ANT_HOME C:\apache-ant-1.9.3
GIT_HOME C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\cmd
JAVA_HOME C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jdk1.7.0_55
PATH %JAVA_HOME%\bin;%ANT_HOME%\bin;%ADT_HOME%\platform-tools;%ADT_HOME%\tools;
C:\Program Files (x86)\nodejs\;C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.1\Windows
Performance Toolkit\;C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\110\Tools\Binn\;
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\TypeScript\1.0\
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment\
(contains no reference to "Platform")
Your kind help is very much appreciated, Thanks Ian
I just ran into this on one of my PCs and here's how I got it fixed:
Quit Visual Studio
Open the Android SDK manager by typing the Windows key and then "SDK manager", hit enter
Install Android Build Tools Rev 19 by checking the box next to it and clicking Install packages
Accept the license
Open Visual Studio and your project, then run it again
Jordan (Microsoft, Multi-Device Hybrid Apps tools team)
Finally the light bulb went on for me: The problem was the install batch files not being able to locate xcopy.exe and therefore the simple remedy was to just extend the path variable with
%SystemRoot%\system32;
The build now runs without further errors.
Thanks Jordan and Ian.
I ended up doing both.
I ran the Android SDK manager to install the Android Build Tools Rev 19 as well as some other updates.
I also added "%SystemRoot%\system32;" to the PATH environment variable.
Everything running as it should.

Why are windows definitions missing on msvc++

I have not been coding in MSVC lately. I have been assigned an old code that has lots of errors but most of the missing definitions are of Windows API.
For example, LPHANDLER_FUNCTION_EX is not defined and is causing C2061 compile error. But I already included Winsvc.h or Windows.h. I know that this is just a definition, I checked my C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDK\ for the definition can be found on the Winsvc.h. So I added the SDK on the directory list (Tools > Options > Directory Tab).
I also downloaded the Windows SDK February 2003 update which is the last version that works with msvc6. (ref)
Just for completeness, My PC is Windows XP SP3. Microsoft Visual C++ Enterprise Edition with SP6 installed. I also installed the Windows SDK February 2003 update.
Any ideas?
I was able to solve this by fixing the order of the include directory via Tools > Options > Directory Tab.
Before the VC98 folder was on top of the SDK.
1st C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VC98\INCLUDE
2nd C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VC98\MFC\INCLUDE
3rd C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VC98\ATL\INCLUDE
4th C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDK\include
Just place the SDK directory to the top of the list and it works.
The suggestion to use /E option by jamesdlin was helpful. Also I set the /E option in the Project Settings > Library Tab > Project Option textbox. The log would be placed in the .plg file inside the project folder.
This would also apply to missing lib file. Set the directory to the SDK directory for library.

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